


Revenant

by Viridian5



Series: Time and Again [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Drama, Humor, M/M, Reunions, loose ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-16
Updated: 2002-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:24:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the eighth Doctor goes to see Turlough to remember, he finds some things changed and many things the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenant

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "Full Circle" in the Time and Again series. You could consider "Escape" a part of this series or not. It's in the story universe but not directly in the arc, and the view of Turlough from the outside necessarily differs from the inside.
> 
> Spoilers for The _Doctor Who_ TV movie (1999) and "Planet of Fire," with some vague stuff from other Turlough episodes.

I walked out of my TARDIS into a tiny flat sparsely furnished with old, scarred cast-offs, not the surroundings I'd expected for my quarry, even if I couldn't exactly say what I'd expected instead. It had the look of a slum room in a sci-fi movie about a technologically advanced future dystopia. Perhaps my old girl had made a mistake, as she sometimes tended to do. A quick browse through a nearby wall computer, the newest item visible in the room, told me that this was indeed the home of Vislor Turlough, at a time about a year and a half from when he last saw me.

It had been considerably longer for me, not that I remembered the time as well as I should have. Thus, my reason for being here.

When the door opened and Turlough stared at me in surprise as he closed it behind him, I took the opportunity to drink in the sight of him. Same long, spindly body, same pale pale skin and icy pale blue eyes, same sharp high-boned face, more length to his ginger-colored hair, but he even wore dark blue, an echo of the Brendon School uniform I most associated with him. Enough time had passed to give the impression of time passing but not so much that he looked like a stranger to me. Perfect.

Then he threw his bag at me, and I barely dodged in time. Whatever he had in it, it left a deep dent in the wall. If not for this new, younger body, I would have been knocked out cold, perhaps badly injured. "Turlough!" I yelled, but his eyes were wild and panicked.

He didn't know me.

Of course, he didn't.

"I am the Doctor!" I yelled to make sure I broke through whatever crazed trance he'd put himself in. "You can see the TARDIS."

He calmed a little but stared at me as if he could take me apart atom by atom with his gaze alone. I found it somewhat unnerving.

"You regenerated?" He sounded as if he didn't quite believe me, even with the TARDIS taking up nearly half the floor space of his flat.

"Several times since you last saw me."

Turlough shook his head. "Just since I last saw you?" He still stared at me, taking in my utterly changed features.

"It's been a longer time for me than for you. You're still wicked."

His mouth moved into the shadow of a smile. "Thank you. How did it happen this time? Your eyes are very blue.... Please sit."

I carefully settled onto a rickety plastic chair. "It's rather personal."

Turlough sat on his bunk, which dipped alarmingly under his scant weight. This close, I saw more to his outfit than just "dark blue," noticing black boots that went up to just below his knees, some kind of white reflective stripe on his jacket, dark trousers, a high, tight collar, all very unlike the old boys school uniform. He appeared to be almost vacuum-sealed into his worn but still respectable clothing.

"And probably embarrassing, which is why I want to hear it. After you mortify yourself, I'll reciprocate. Besides, you're here for a specific reason, I imagine, not just to renew an old acquaintance."

He'd switched to English. I wondered if he even realized.

I switched to the same language, enjoying the feel of it in my mouth and on my tongue, far better than relying on the translator. "This latest regeneration was harder than usual, and my memory is still not what it should be. You knew me in two different incarnations, so I felt it best to try seeing you."

"Two-- That was you? In New York City? That must have been an earlier you than the one I'd traveled with. Is there a reason you didn't tell me?"

Oh, dear. I'd forgotten that I hadn't revealed that to him. "I'm sure I had an excellent reason."

Turlough's smile, the narrowed cast of his eyes, looked quite wicked. "Which you don't remember." At least I'd convinced him of my identity.

"No."

"I suppose that explains why you accepted me immediately the first time I met you. I'd already paid for my trip."

"Turlough! I hardly--"

He had his blandest, most placatory expression on now. "Peace. I'm only kidding. I want to hear the story of this regeneration. Please."

I hardly came out looking well in this story, but I'd already begun to take that awful downtrodden look off his face, so.... "I was shot upon leaving the TARDIS."

"Immediately?"

"I'm afraid so."

"You didn't look before you walked out, did you?"

"No."

Turlough coughed. "So you walked right out into a gun battle. I figured that would happen eventually. And that killed you."

"Actually, no. I was taken to a hospital--"

"On Earth?"

"Yes."

"Of course. Better and better. Please continue on."

"Thank you. They tried to operate on me to save my life."

"And killed you."

"By accident! They didn't know I had two hearts." Poor Grace had meant only the best.

"Was this a hospital with X-ray equipment? Better, was this a hospital where a doctor could put an ear to your chest and hear two heartbeats?"

I sighed.

Turlough grinned. "Let me summarize. You walked out of the TARDIS, without looking first, straight into gunfire. Then your beloved humans killed you by accident by trying to save your life. Would that be accurate?"

"Yes," I snapped.

"That is embarrassing. Not your finest hour."

Annoyed, I said, with some malice, "Lovely place. It's a--"

"--pestilential hole with furniture, and a small, pestilential hole at that. This is what amnesty gets you, I'm afraid. It's not that former political prisoners are deliberately ghettoized, just that for some reason it's all we can afford since our nefarious pasts disqualify us from so many occupations. We are forgiven officially, yet our former status is the first thing at the top of our histories any time we vote in this charming republic that is so superior to the old regime or interview for employment -- and my ancestors would die over the idea of a Turlough interviewing if they were not already dead."

I'd expected him to deflect or lie. I hadn't expected this flood of weary truth. His snappish wit remained, but all the glee had been drained out of it. So easily.

"How do you occupy yourself?" I asked.

"To support myself in such splendor? I did communications and data entry for a while. Even spent a few weeks revisiting my military experience testing security for ventilation systems. Now, however, I have found employment uniquely suited for someone with the drawbacks of having my political past and airs, the last of which I'm told make me seem arrogant, superior, and sneaky."

"I'm almost afraid to ask."

"It turns out that some people will pay to be harangued by someone who sounds like old style nobility, even someone who has a bizarre off-world accent, such as English, marring his speech. I don't even have to see them, just talk to them remotely."

"That sounds like phone sex." I was too surprised to decide how I felt about that.

"I don't particularly care what my clientele does with my performance as long as they pay well, and how else can I make money berating people, which is something I'd do for free? And it's so shameful and hidden an aspect of our new, enlightened society that it doesn't impede me at all in my political wranglings, since no one will admit that some people hunger for such service as I provide."

"Political wranglings? Are you speaking of Malkon and the other refugees from Sarn?" I could almost feel the whirl of his words rekindling synaptic connections in my brain, which was how I could now draw upon his brother's name.

Turlough closed his eyes, looking even more tired and suddenly years older. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Where is he?"

"That's part of the problem. The Sarn refugees didn't fit well into our society, and our own citizens hardly made them welcome. These refugees were former political prisoners and the children of such, as well as the descendents of Sarn's native population. They aren't like us, they have no skills, they'll suck down our resources and contribute nothing, they'll drive down wages.... I heard it all before... in England. It's bitterly funny in an awful way. The government found a bare patch of undeveloped, seemingly worthless desert to plunk them down in, saying that it was kind to situate them somewhere that's like their lost home. I went with them, with my brother. He's all I had left of my family. Besides, it's not like I had anything here to lose."

"What happened?"

Turlough shrugged. "The heat and sun made me very ill. I was insane with it, certain that eventually my skin would finish sloughing off and I'd be reborn as the creature of fire that I already felt like. That's the best I can remember. My brief time on Sarn did me little damage, but days on days with little shelter in a desert on my own home planet wrecked me. Still, we thought that maybe I would adjust eventually. Maybe insanity was contagious. They gave me surprising leeway considering that I was so utterly foreign to them, though I'm sure my brother's influence gave them more patience with me.

"Then news came that the government intended to move them _again_ because illegal, stealth surveys had found precious minerals near the settlement. I came back here to fight, since I was the only advocate and defender the Sarn refugees had and the most knowledgeable about politics. My history and airs are debits, but they have no one better who's willing. I've held off the resettlement for months, but...." A hectic fire lit Turlough's ice-colored eyes from within. "Are you here to cause chaos like you usually do? I'd be quite amenable to that."

"I really came just to heal myself as best I could."

"There is injustice here, but you will not help?"

"This is a situation that requires precision, while my ways are the equivalent of throwing a spanner into the works."

"Precision? If this mockery of a government falls, my brother and his people won't have to worry about being dispossessed. A spanner would be fine here."

"What would take its place?"

"Do you think this is an improvement over the original system? I only treasure the old ways because I was happy and cared-for under them. What follows this republic probably won't be any better, but I doubt it will be worse. And you never used to care about such things!"

"I always did."

"Please. You always left right before the really messy sorting-out started."

I saw uncomfortable truth in that. How many of the hopeful new beginnings I'd left turned into a new nightmare or back to status quo after I left? "No one remains the same forever. This isn't about justice for you, Turlough. You just want to watch everything burn to the ground."

"Yes," Turlough agreed immediately, nearly radiating intensity. "I may not be better than these people, but I am not worse. They branded my infant brother along with the rest of my surviving family before sending them out into an exile that killed almost all of them. The first thing they did once they had their republic was take on for themselves the trappings and wealth of the people they claimed to hate. There are new aristocrats here, even if they lack the titles, and they are aristocrats by bloody plunder instead of birthright."

"This isn't what I wanted."

"Of course not."

A banging at the door banked the fire in Turlough's eyes a bit. I watched him become visibly meeker as he walked over to answer it, but I couldn't tell if the meekness went below the skin. I never could with Turlough.

"Guests are allowed, and we've been quiet," he said in his native language to the man on the other side of the door. Now that I listened for it, I could hear a slight English accent in it.

The man's eyes raked the small apartment and me. He looked highly disreputable, but he in turn no doubt found my manner of dress to be eccentric in the extreme. "If he becomes a roommate, you'll have to pay extra."

"His living quarters are more spacious. He has no urge to live with me."

The man made a scoffing noise, then walked away. Turlough closed the door, then leaned against it, deflating further. "And once upon a time I thought that nothing would be better than the right to go home," he said softly in English. "This isn't quite the reunion you expected, is it?"

"Not quite. Although I didn't really know what to expect."

"You caught me on a bad day. Today I saw it confirmed that the current popular opinion in the parliament is that the Sarn refugees aren't really Trion citizens and thus have no vote in whether they are moved hither and yon nor right of ownership of Trion land. As a former political criminal and exile, I'm barely counted as being more of a citizen than they are. I... really would like to go somewhere else for a while. Can we?"

My TARDIS, the more spacious living quarters Turlough had spoken of. Perhaps I could help in some small way. "Let's." I wondered what he'd think of the redecorating. My seventh self had done it, but it suited me as well.

"Look at you, so much shorter than I am now."

"Impudent puppy." But I smiled.

He laughed.

Turlough noted the difference immediately upon entering. Difficult not to. The new control room gave the impression of great space, but with pockets of cozy comfort. It was a place one could live in, unlike the spare, sterile room with a harsh white glow that it had once been. Studying the room carefully, he ran his hands over the carvings in the dark wood and stone of the walls before stopping at the console's wood cabinet and old-fashioned controls. He'd probably mapped out the apparent exits with his eyes already.

"This is almost unbearably retro," Turlough said with a slightly mocking twist to his thin mouth.

"You don't like it?" I wasn't entirely surprised.

"I feel like I'm supposed to be 20,000 leagues under the sea. This style harkens back to Earth's past, not mine. Your original setup reminded me of ships I served on. I found the obvious engine sound and vibration very soothing." But he settled into one of my antique chairs and put his feet up on the footrest, stretching like a cat first to make himself more comfortable, anyway. The cushions had to surpass the comfort of anything he owned.

Turlough still retained the look of a starving waif. I always wanted to feed him, but could anything be enough to satisfy his hungers?

"Would you like some tea?" I asked.

__

That upset him, I could tell, since he almost said yes automatically. His exile at Brendon School had left its marks on his behavior, something he hated to be reminded of. I set the biscuits and teacup on its saucer on a nearby table. Turlough took a deep breath and added sugar to his tea, apparently deciding on an insouciant response.

I respected his dignity by pretending I didn't notice his earlier slip as I sipped my own tea. I also resisted the urge to stroke him into calm, since his reactions to such while he was embarrassed ranged from melting into it to flinching to striking at the hand that dared to so touch him.

The meditative silence as we both drank our tea would be an only temporary oasis, I knew. What I didn't know was what direction our conversation would take now that I'd refused to throw Trion into anarchy. He seemed soothed by my tea and the relative luxury of my Victorian study but I knew better than to trust that.

He set his cup aside and looked at me, his gaze softer and hotter than it had been. "You're very pretty now, are you aware of that?" he purred.

I felt the old answering heat, even as I asked, "Are you saying I wasn't pretty before?" I knew better than to think that any seduction he had planned would be so simple, but the uncertainties only added spice.

"More classically pretty now. Although I miss the nose you first had somewhat."

"Flatterer. I think you miss the scarf."

"It was so _useful_." Turlough pulled me down onto the chair to sit between his long legs. "So, how much have you forgotten?" His fingers seemed to love the soft, shiny fabric of my coat, because they played with it incessantly, stroking and pinching as if he could steal the feel of it that way.

"I haven't forgotten this."

"Prove it."

I hadn't been forced to go to Turlough to help me remember myself. The Brigadier had known me longer, almost for most of his life, and Sarah Jane could also have served. Both of them had seen me regenerate before. They would have been gentle with me, slowly coaxing my memories back into being.

Listening to Turlough's flood of words, fighting to understand him, had brought me along the path to finding myself again much faster, so fast that it almost hurt, but I found it a bracing kind of pain.

Turlough had never been an easy companion, never someone you could take for granted. He'd been broken once, and the edges of his damage remained for other people to get cut on. You could also say that he was like a pet that could luxuriate in your stroking one moment, then bite your hand the next. Wisest to be cautious around him and calculate all the angles of every situation, because you knew _he_ would, reckoning advantages to himself in turning this way or that. And he would turn on you if he thought that would benefit him best.

He was sharp, and he forced you to stay sharp to survive. I needed that sharpness, and I wanted to be on the receiving end of all the crazy passion he had in him. His moodiness, intensity, and ability to feel two contradictory emotions at exactly the same time had helped him fit in amongst the human adolescents of the Brendon School during his exile. I wondered if he'd ever lose that.

I wondered how old he was by Trion standards but never asked. It seemed too often as if secrets were the only thing Turlough owned, and each one taken from him cost him dearly.

He challenged me, and I needed that. I'd become complacent and too calm in my seventh life; my last death had shown me the error in that all too clearly. Turlough was so alive and raw that it terrified him, so alive and raw that he often failed to keep it all hidden under the stillness and imperturbability he tried to cultivate.

Occasionally I'd thought that I could better him or heal him, but I suspected that he might be beyond even my skills and experience to fix.

And would I truly want him to be different?

"Sitting there staring into space is not proving it," Turlough said, teasing the curve of my ear with his tongue.

"Merely plotting my attack." I turned to face him and pressed him into the chair with the weight of my body and kiss. He was already hard and moving against me in an old, familiar rhythm. "Have you been so deprived?" Not that I had the right to taunt, not while this new, younger body nearly screamed with lust.

"My diminished prospects make me a less attractive catch. In any case, I haven't found any partners with a few hundred years of experience lately."

"Pity." I pressed my hand down hard along his erection through his trousers.

"Yes," he hissed. "You're wearing a cravat? Insanity...." He undid that, setting its stickpin on the table beside us, then unbuttoned my vest and my shirt, running his long, slightly chilled hands down my chest, making me shudder. They should have been warm from the tea, but Turlough had less than ideal circulation. He'd claimed that England's damp and cold had settled into his bones permanently.

I had far less luck with the hidden fastenings on his outfit, and my failures seemed to amuse him unduly, especially when I snarled over them. "You could help," I said. The fabric of his clothing felt almost slick, and my fingers skittered over it.

"I could."

"Will you?"

"Perhaps."

"Is this revenge for my refusal to overthrow the government for you?" I had to ask.

He brought me closer by wrapping his long legs around me and rocked. "How petty you think me. Doctor, I am accustomed to taking whatever I can get."

"Turlough...."

"It's fine."

His pale hands contrasted sharply and pleasingly against the dark fabric of his jacket and then shirt as he undid the cunning hidden fasteners, the high collar slowly falling away from the white column of his neck. It seemed more like unwrapping a gift than undressing. His eyes gazed at me but didn't appear to see me, as if his mind had gone elsewhere and looked out upon a different vista entirely. I sucked at his exposed collarbone to bring him back.

"Hello," he sighed softly, sounding pleased. He rubbed his chin on my hair.

__

Now he was inclined to take it slowly? Turlough laughed, so my expression must have been a sight.

"You really are very pretty now," he said as he grabbed my shoulders and kissed me deeply, sucking on my tongue. "How do you want to take this? Fast or slow? Hard or gentle?"

"Will you hold to a single course throughout?"

Turlough shifted in the chair. "I feel as if I'm trapped in a particularly naughty Regency romance here."

Frustrated, affectionate, I took his hand and yanked him to his feet, then led him into the hall. Openly curious, he followed without demure. He truly was part feline.

I pushed him through the door. He stood in the harsh, white glare with a smile on his face so bright and genuine that I wondered if I were glimpsing the boy he must have been once before war, imprisonment, and exile had left their scars. I'd only needed to bring him to the control room I'd used during his tenure with me. Closing his eyes, he set his hands on my old console and appeared to savor the vibration within it almost erotically.

When he opened his eyes, I involuntarily stepped back a few paces from the hunger blazing in them. "_Here_," he said.

Yes.

I felt our new difference in heights keenly as we stood kissing, my head tilted up to accept his mouth. He backed us up until I had him pressed hard against the wall, and although the roundels had to dig into his spine, he seemed far more content that way. More than content, he seemed aflame, running his hands and mouth over my skin hard and fast. I now understood what he'd said about vibration, as the thrum of my old girl at work ran through our bodies and set my nerves tingling and buzzing.

I had the sudden thought that his every move screamed of wanting a bit of rough, and that thought felt like an echo. Another me had thought that of him too, in almost exactly the same words. It distracted me beyond measure.

Turlough nipped at my ear in a way that would have driven my fifth incarnation mad with lust but only felt pleasant to me now. When he noticed that I didn't respond as he'd expected, he sighed and said, "If you could be more helpful, I would appreciate it."

I pressed closer. "I've never had sex in this body, so I have no more idea than you do what works best for it. But we could find out...."

He smiled slyly, looking almost evil. "Really?" he drawled. But then he sighed. "I don't think I have the endurance and patience at the moment to give you the treatment you deserve."

"Nor do I."

He smiled again. "Excellent. Strip for me."

What cheek. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." In case I needed to have an example, Turlough removed his jacket, then his shirt, with brisk, intense motions. He started to unfasten his trousers with similar efficiency.

Somehow it inflamed me more than a slow, seductive striptease would have, perhaps because his speed bespoke an honest lust. How could I do any less? But once I was half-naked, he abandoned the effort to remove his opened trousers, took my hand, and set his lips against my bare wrist. The humid heat of his breath, the ticklish movement of his mouth against my sensitive skin, sent unexpected ripples of sensation directly through me, and my trousers became more uncomfortable. I felt his smile as hard, blunt pressure.

"What was that?" I asked somewhat shakily.

"Who would guess that Trion sexual techniques work so well with your new self?" he murmured, before kissing his way along my wrist, into my palm, and started to suck my fingers one by one, letting them slide in and out of his mouth in highly suggestive ways.

The sight brought an old memory across my mind like a whiplash, my cock hardening further as I remembered him fellating my fingers that night in New York City and what it had meant. "Do you want that?"

He gave me a lush look as he let the current finger slide down his lower lip, slicking it. "What do you think?" Turlough pulled his trousers down to mid-thigh, turned to face the wall, braced his hands against it, and assumed a position that displayed what he was offering, making my breath catch.

Aching with lust, I opened my trousers and pulled them away just enough to serve, sighing at the relief of it. I licked one fingertip, tasting tea and something almost spicy, then used it to circle the sensitive skin of the rim of my goal, smiling as Turlough pushed back into it in pleasure and impatience. On his next push back I let it slide in and up, facing a little more resistance than I remembered until he took a deep breath and relaxed, opening to me. I created a rhythm for my thrusts and added another finger.

"Tease," he hissed.

It sounded like a familiar invitation to me, and I couldn't hold back any longer. When I thrust in deeply, as far as I could go, I could feel his moan reverberate through his whole body, just as the TARDIS's thrumming traveled through the circuit of flesh we made. Ice pale and cleanly sloping as he was, he always surprised me with his inner heat, just as his thin body never let an observer suspect the way his inner muscles could clutch. I nearly achieved orgasm right then from the sensations and memories. Muscle memory, brain memory, sense memory of how sharp he smelled and tasted when I was inside him and plastered to his back. I started to ride him hard, as I knew he liked it, but he rode me back too, making it difficult to tell who was truly fucking whom.

Instead of touching himself, Turlough kept his hands up to brace us against the wall. Seeing an injustice, I moved to fix it by stroking his cock with the hand. He thrust into my fist with a force and rhythm that nearly matched what I used on him. The reciprocity of it hit me hard, so hard that I found myself biting his shoulder as an outlet. He achieved orgasm with a choked shout and a shudder that ran through his whole body, taking me with him.

Once the haze of nearly mindless sensuality started to fade, I noticed the livid red marks my teeth had left in his pale skin, and it left me ashamed. My body must have broadcasted my feelings somehow, because Turlough said, "I liked it. Do you see me complaining? You know I would be if I hadn't."

As I disengaged from him I noticed another livid mark, this time on his arm. The brand he'd been given before his exile. When I helplessly traced the two raised, interlocking triangles of it, he shuddered. My fourth self had toyed with it that one night without knowing its origin, thinking it a simple if extreme form of body decoration, and a more cautious Turlough had kept it hidden from my fifth self through subtle movements and a hundred small misdirections. Now that I knew what the brand stood for, it disgusted and fascinated me by turns. He lived in a society that burnt identifying marks onto its political prisoners.

His voice shook as well. "There's a major nerve cluster there."

Once I thought about what that meant, what they'd done to him, it horrified me. But as I started to move my hand away, he put his own over mine to keep it there. "I like it," he said. "I just couldn't ask before, for obvious reasons."

When I set my mouth and tongue to the branded flesh, he let out a shivery sigh that matched the movements of his body. That alone had brought him to full erection again, and he pushed his cock into the grasping circle of his hand. My own hands free, I set one of mine right below his, stroking his testicles lightly with my littlest finger at times.

The friction of his thrusts against my palm contrasted to the utter smoothness of those raised triangles, the surprisingly sharp and defined edges of them. It took thought, effort, and practice to make the shape of a brand that neat and distinct. When I rubbed my teeth against it, he cried out and came.

Panting against me, Turlough said, "Doctor, let me--"

It enraged me that they'd marred him in such a way, but my anger was not with Turlough, and I kept my tone light as I answered, "I don't recover quite as quickly as you do. And kindly refrain from looking so smug."

"Yes, _sir_. Far be it from me to critique any physiological disadvantages Gallifreyans may have."

I realized that this bit with his arm was the first time Turlough had revealed any hint of sexuality that wasn't a strictly human thing. Despite the fact that I'd already known he was alien, he'd persisted in behaving strictly human in our sexplay. Was this confession a sign of greater trust in me?

He'd been wild and wanton with my fourth self, gentle and showily, perhaps falsely, vulnerable with my fifth. Did his actions now suggest that he'd be honest, open, with my current self?

__

Could he be?

I wanted to know. "Come with me."

"We already did that once. I offered to do it again, but you declined."

Brat. I elbowed him. "You know what I mean."

"I can't go with you, Doctor, not with Malkon's fate so uncertain." Turlough closed his eyes. "For so long I wanted nothing more than to run away. Then I had my chance to do so, with you, and it was what I needed. For a while. Now I believe that it's time for me to stand and fight."

He'd come to this on his own, and I felt proud of him for it, even as I felt a selfish disappointment that I'd be deprived of his company. "You sound very responsible."

"Hearing that was better than the sex for you, wasn't it?"

"Almost."

"It would still be easier if you'd get into your usual trouble and--"

"Turlough."

"I had to try. Are you sure I can't get you to stay longer?"

He asked knowing full well that the longer I stayed, the greater the odds that I would inadvertently, inevitably stick my nose where it didn't belong and set things out of joint. "Turlough."

"At least long enough to see what else your new body might like."

I couldn't bring myself to resist. "That is doable."

"Excellent."

  


* * *

His flat seemed even smaller and more squalid when we returned. How much worse was it for Turlough that he had to live here, especially after I'd reminded him of better accommodations?

Turlough smiled almost sweetly. "Please don't feel as if you have to die a few more times before you can visit me again."

This dreary, dispiriting flat, his brother and the refugees' plight, that brand burned onto a place where it would hurt most and perhaps do maximum emotional damage.... The thoughts and feelings swelled in me until I felt compelled to say, "I only have your word and indirect evidence to tell me how awful things supposedly are here. I'd need to see it for myself."

Turlough's smile deepened. "That is doable."

 

### End


End file.
